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And I once walked into a store and banged down hundreds of dollars for an iPad only to find once I got it home it was a Samsung Galaxy tablet. Perhaps the words on the box, the different software, the different colour, the different interface should have tipped me off, but heck, they were both RECTANGULAR with a BUTTON.

So judge Koh is protecting poor people like me, who desperately want an iPad but accidentally buy a competitor that out powers it, out functions it, comes in a wider range of varieties and is developing faster than it.

Incredible to think a single person can do so much good for the world and all without any bribe money!

Apparently the decision was based on, "Apple's claim to the patent to search multiple sources, which Apple says is the basis of Siri. [...] Judge Koh said 'Apple has articulated a plausible theory of irreparable harm [because] of long-term loss of market share and losses of downstream sales."

Forget the absurdity of the similarity claims and the who's done it first angle... this phrase from TFA should be enough to draw some conclusions:

Koh granted the injunction after Apple argued that the Galaxy Nexus phone caused it irreparable harm due to long-term market-share loss and "losses of downstream sales," according to The Next Web.

This is simply anti-capitalism stated on a single sentence. Basically, from what I grasp, the idea is "we need to avoid that competitor's action because we would lose money if competition were to happen".

I intended to throw a joke to mock the US for this kind of reasoning in the legal system, but the situation is actually kinda depressing and worrying when one assess where the current trends are taking the entire country. Although I'm not from the US, it makes me pause just thinking about the long term consequences of these changes.

Maybe someone smarter than me could figure out what we'll have in the future, since capitalism might join socialism in the History books.

This is simply anti-capitalism stated on a single sentence. Basically, from what I grasp, the idea is "we need to avoid that competitor's action because we would lose money if competition were to happen".

Patents are inherently anti-competitive. In fact, limiting competition is their entire function.

(I almost said "their entire purpose," but then corrected myself: the "purpose" of patents is to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." Whether patents' purpose and function jive with each other is another issue entirely...)

Looks like the file date is 2000 and the issue date is in 2005. Am I looking in the wrong place?

The funny thing is, none of the actual heavy lifting in this patent appears to be theirs. It's all in the cited patents held by other companies. All they appear to have said here was, "we're patenting the idea of putting a textbox in Mac OS to do this stuff everyone else already invented and patented".

I'm a little amazed that such a thing can be considered a valid invention. It reads like, "Well John over here invented the car, but I'm going to patent the idea of painting it blue as if that's an invention".

I literally know not a single OSX user that doesn't use Chrome or Firefox as their main browser and would remove Safari if it was possible, much like pretty much everyone I know with a Windows machine would dump I.E. in a second if that were possible.

Well count one right here then.

I'm a web developer, run several virtualized instances of Windows and have Chrome, and Firefox installed on my host OS as well as my virtualized Windows machines, but I use Safari as my main browser.

Think this is the closest Apple's come yet to going after core Google. It's the search patent that appears to have snagged them. If they get this, they get every android phone currently out there and serve a continual warning to every potential Android licensee that if they even think of entering the Phone Market, they WILL be sued out of existence. Don't think even MS back in the day was ever as obviously aggressive as this.

For something that I've always suspected started as a way to negotiate cheaper component prices out of Samsung, Apple's really stirred up a poo storm.

Samsung? Contacts be damned, now's the time to stop shipping anything to your competitor who only wants to see you destroyed the second they can replace you.Apple started the nerf bat swinging, never know who it'll take out in the end.

Crap like this is why I've been saying for awhile people need to quit worrying about MSFT, which under Ballmer the only real skills they seem to have anymore is blowing money and shooting themselves in the face, and start worrying about Apple.

Just remember folks that Jobs before he died said he would happily spend his fortune to "Nuke Android" and I wouldn't be surprised if Cook hasn't forgotten those words. I'm sure he knows with Ballmer at the helm MSFT isn't a threat, as Zune and Kin and WinPhone 7 made quite clear, but high end Android devices with faster refreshes and newer and more powerful hardware IS very much a threat. I have a feeling its gonna get a whole lot nastier and I agree, if I was Samsung I wouldn't sell them so much as a screw.

If this gets upheld, Apple will be able to get an injunction on every Android phone because this is a core OS feature. I'd say that affects consumers. Plus, it seems like there's a pretty good chance that Google could find some patent between theirs and Motorola's that applies to the iPhone, which could lead to a counter ban. Maybe (hopefully) it won't get that far, but this is the patent armageddon that people have been worrying about with all these lawsuits.

If this gets upheld, Apple will be able to get an injunction on every Android phone because this is a core OS feature. I'd say that affects consumers. Plus, it seems like there's a pretty good chance that Google could find some patent between theirs and Motorola's that applies to the iPhone, which could lead to a counter ban. Maybe (hopefully) it won't get that far, but this is the patent armageddon that people have been worrying about with all these lawsuits.

On the contrary, this is exactly what needs to happen. Google should search their patents and find every single one that could apply to every single Apple device. Once they've built their case they should, without a seconds warning, nuke Apple with everything. Seek injunctions against Apple's entire business. Once granted, bring them to the table to sort all this stupidity out.

It's either that or everyone but Apple suffers a death of a thousand cuts.

No need to abolish patents. Just to acknowledge that "if you can implement the patent without access to the written description, them it is obvious to anyone sufficiently skilled in the art" and thus invalid.

However, the WTO should blast America into orbit for allowing this kind of injunction, which is clearly intended to prevent foreign competition. Yay, lets have a trade war. Korea can ban the import of American beer and DVDs in retaiation!

That's kind of the point. The entire purpose of patents is to protect inventions made by someone which would not have been released to the public otherwise. If the patented invention could be invented by someone else anyway, the patent is purely a money making exercise, and not in the public good.

That's the whole point of reverse engineering [wikipedia.org]. And it's not a problem. It's a common sense limitation on patents - if it takes your competition all of 30 seconds to reverse engineer your software patent for X, without seeing the code or the specifications for it, the patent isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Obviousness.

There are other things to consider. Would you be happy, as a CEO, to work your butt off 24/7 for years to invent something great, and just when it catches up and start making real money, see Google make the *very exact same thing* (with a different logo) on a much much much larger scale (because they're so much bigger) and make you go back into mothingness?

I guess not.

Patents are here for a reason, and that reason is perfectly valid. Of course, the process can be perfected. For example, I think patents should be adapted to the field they apply to. For instance, software patents should last 5 years max.

Did'ja ever notice how when a bully is confronted with the truth, they get louder. They start to attempt to intimidate by any means at their disposal. When confronted with facts, they get confused, and don't know what to do as their audience catches on and begins to drift away. That's when they become more desperate and turn to larger bullying tactics. Then the bullied either stands their ground or meekly lets the bully win. There are times when the best course of action for the bullied is to walk away, and hopefully live to fight another day. IMHO, for this is not one. Apple has been losing their ardent followers for some time now. People have seen android as a very viable alternative, and are switching over. Apple knows this, or they wouldn't be resorting to these bully tactics. I root for the underdog in life, and love it when the bullies lose.

"It's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging," an Apple spokeswoman said in an email. "This kind of blatant copying is wrong and, as we've said many times before, we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas."

Oh yes because Apple invented phones, calendars, address books, web browsers and SMS messaging tools. I'm sure don't believe their own shit, rather they see this as a means to delay successful delpoyment of a competitive product.

Well the flipside of that argument could be: if they don't know enough about the iPad to tell the difference, how do they/we really know they wanted an "iPad" instead of "a tablet" anyway?

They could just be using iPad as the only name they know of for a new fangled flat computer. And even then - if "iPad" is the only name they know of to ask for in the store or the only name to look for on the box, why weren't they sold one?

If similar looks are really such an issue, wouldn't these people who just grab something in the store (without asking for an iPad or looking for "iPad" on the box) be in danger of accidentally walking out with an electronic picture frame or something? Should the judge get involved there too?

This is all moot though - from the sound of things it was Siri search patents rather than looks that are behind the injunction.

They could just be using iPad as the only name they know of for a new fangled flat computer.

This. I saw it myself with iPod; working at CompUSA back in the day, I'd say 75% of people would come in looking for an 'iPod' and then ask me why I was only showing them the ones Apple made and not the Sansui's, Samsungs, Zunes, and all the other branded ones. When I'd point out that they asked for an iPod, they'd respond "Yeah, but I don't necessarily just want the Apple iPods...these other iPods are much cheaper" while they're sitting there with an iRiver in their hands.

Ah yes, another unbiased tidbit from the guy who last week posted a thread about his "genuine concern" that the patent system was under attack by FRAND patent holders, only to be forced into spam-trolling his own thread because not everyone agreed.

Take a look at both the outer design and software of Samsung's phones before and after the iPhone and say with a straight face that Samsung didn't copy at least some elements from Apple.

Who cares? It's fine to copy elements from other devices. It's fine to make look-alike and work-alike devices of other successful devices. That's how progress is made in high tech.

And Apple itself copied most of the iPhone design elements, and much of its functionality from other companies, including key features like desktop sync, MP3 sync, app stores, launchers, and many more. If such copying weren't allowed, there would be no iPhone.

What makes Apple's behavior so wrong and destructive is that they copy liberally from others and then turn around and try to monopolize the market with bad patents.

JooJoo Tablet came out before the iPad was even announced I believe. I keep hearing 'well, there wasn't anything like the iPad before the iPad came out' but there were devices that worked like it (though cheap and bad Chinese Android tablets), and tablets that/looked/ like the iPad (JooJoo tablet).

Samsung had similar designs in other places, I don't think it's a stretch of imagination to use those same designs in your own products, that someone else just happens to have also used. Though even then, hold a Samsung Android Tablet and an Apple tablet, and the difference is obvious.

So what? That's how technology goes: good design costs, so you start with good enough, and iterate to good. It's worth noting that the OpenMoko phone, ab open source phone, also very similar to the iPhone, was under development and probably would have come out before the iPhone if they'd had more money. Trade secret protection is not a defense against independent development, and rumors don't change that.

The fact is that the market was primed for devices like the iPhone and iPad when they came out. The parts had gotten cheap enough. The iPhone is a great product, and the iPad is a great product, but neither product was a surprise, and neither product gives Apple the rights to a monopoly on that form factor.

I once worked on some high-quality, German engineered washing machines. It was discovered that, rather than spend hundreds of thousands on R&D, LG Electronics bought one of these units, disassembled it and copied it feature-for-feature albeit with minor design modifications.

The result? A washer that boasted the same features, yet "walked" across the floor during the spin cycle.

There were no legal breaches by LG in cleanrooming like that. I guess Samsung just pushed the envelope a bit far in the aesthetics department.

I used to work with German companies to develop both components and machinery for my company, and I do not agree. The Germans I worked with had a high regard for Japanese and Korean machinery. Their view was that German manufacturing and skills were a few years ahead, and that much of their superiority was in the education and training of the workforce. A German machine tool was better because it might use the latest material, drive or control technology, but mainly because it had been put together by people who were that much better than their Far Eastern competitors.

In fact, one of our suppliers used to sell their machines to the Far East after 18 months to 2 years because by then they had worn to the extent that they were about as good as new Far Eastern machines. By doing this, they helped German companies keep their machine tool sales up.

But to anyone who was involved with mobile devices at the time, the precursors of Apple's designs were clear; they took bits from PalmOS Cobalt, Prizm, Maemo and others.

As far as the physical design of the phone goes, it's all about fashion. Before about 2006, smartphones were all silver or grey, had a curved lower "chin" where the button cluster lived and still-curved but flatter top. By late 2006 though, most phones marketed as stylish (LG Prada, Samsung Chocolate & F700 etc) were dark or black, becoming much more squared off and had minimalist button designs.

I think Apple did well, they designed an iconic phone with components like processors and capacitive screens that were just becoming available at reasonable prices. However, I have no doubt if the iPhone hadn't been released, there would still be dozens of similar looking phones on the market, because that's where fashion and technology was taking them.

Apple's been clever to ride that fashion, but that doesn't mean they're entitled to a free ride.

When everyone can just sit back and minimize their costs by not innovating, instead only copying others as necessary to offset competitive advantages, then nobody innovates

Look at what happened to the companies Apple copied their major technologies from: Xerox, Palm, Diamond, Psion, Nokia, AT&T, etc. They are largely history. So are many of the small apps developers that innovated in the mobile space only to get copied by Apple. Those are the people who actually spent lots of money and effort on innovation, they just didn't manage to compete against Apple's design and marketing juggernaut.

So, don't pretend that these patents and lawsuits Apple keeps winning are rewarding the innovators. The innovators have already gone out of business. What Apple's patents are rewarding is a ruthless company that "shamelessly steals" (a direct Steve Jobs quote) other people's great ideas and doesn't invest a dime in research itself. And shameless stealing is not something we want to reward.

Progress in technology is made by copying what is successful and then improving on it. Forcing companies to start from scratch and break convention and compatibility in everything hinders progress.

And copying is exactly how the iPhone improved on what was there before: Apple largely cloned Palm's functionality and UI, reused their OS that was derived from Mach and Smalltalk, and added a smattering of Nokia and Symbian into the mix.

"Historically, imitation has frequently been proposed as the central mechanism mediating the reproduction, spread, intergenerational transmission and stabilization of human cultural forms, population-specific behavioral traditions found in groups of non-human primates, or both"

Whether their they look similar or whether Samsung copied Apple's design ideas is completely irrelevant. There's no general protection against "copying ideas".

It's well established that "look and feel" are not protected by copyright (see Apple vs. Microsoft), so they've turned instead to these doubtful patents to stifle competition. Even if these trivial patents are in fact valid (and having one held invalid takes years and millions of dollars and relatively onerous standards of evidence), they're arguably an abuse of the system originally designed to protect other sorts of inventions.

But that doesn't explain why their UI, external design, and OS suddenly became indistinguishable.

Have you actually used a Galaxy Nexus? I have one in my pocket right now. It looks nothing like an iPhone. The physical design and the way the OS looks and feels are entirely different. Not only is the design different, the hardware is superior in many ways. My friends routinely get me to take photos at parties because in low lighting conditions the GN camera seems to do a better job than the iPhone.

This is the most stupid decision yet. The GN has a very distinct design to the iPhone.

At what point did I say my friends all had the 4S? They have "iPhones" and I don't really know or care about the actual specs. All I know is that if we're in a bar or club in the evening, their cameras tend to take washed out or under-lit photos and mine doesn't. That isn't my opinion. It's theirs.

Gosh. Wow. Years ago all there was were tiny little screens and no-one could economically produce larger ones with sensible resolution and decent touch functionality. Now there are dozens of manufacturers capable of producing a 4" - 5" LCD with good touch functionality. Some of the technology making that possible will be covered by patents, and perhaps rightfully so.

Now give this 4" touch LCD to ten designers and ask them to design a phone around that screen. Do you really think they will all be very different? Sure, some will have a keyboard, some will have one or two buttons, and some will have none. How is that innovation?

If your view would be accepted then the first to come out with a 4-wheeled car owns the design and everyone else has to pick a different number of wheels, or a totally different wheel configuration (two on the side, one front, one back perhaps?). And we would all still be having bulky big TV's and monitors, because Sony or B&O or Philips happened to be the first to come out with a flat screen and they would own the design.

A patent troll is abuses the incompetent system within USPTO to gain financial advantage, sure they mostly don't make things (why bother when its easy money), but some do, and Microsoft and Apple both make things AND are patent trolls.

So in Apple's case they patented research of others that they used in the iPod Touch, and claimed to have invented it:http://www.businessinsider.com/and-boy-have-we-patented-it-2010-3

I think they just saw Han's work, myself, rather than go back and copy the CERN work from the 70's which covered the same slide, pinch etc. gestures.

You can't really blame them, the USPTO has showed it will issue patents to anyone for things that aren't inventions, to people who didn't invent them, and for things that are obvious (and in some cases industry common practice at the time), and of course there will be roaches that come out and feed on this feeding opportunity.

"Defending your patents doesn't make you a patent troll. "Once you get your USPTO issued joke patents, defending them with a straight face IS PATENT TROLLING. The art is to not laugh when you tell the judge how you invented these things.

Fortunately the rest of the world can enjoy all those things that are forbidden in the US. Seems the US is no longer the place to get your new stuff.Now I am the last one to say anything about the quality or something, but at least the rest of the rest of the world has a free choice.

it's really sad to see what capitalism is doing to a country that had such high goals when i was first created. now it seems mostly you will get incarcerated, sued, beaten up or criminalized for things that are perfectly normal in the rest of the free world.

i think it's really cynical of american polititians to even use the word "freedom" in their campaigns since it has basically lost all meaning due to the entanglement of business, military and politics.

Stuff like this makes me want to buy a Samsung device right now, simply out of spite for these agressive, bullshit patent practices that limit competition and my choices as a consumer.Also, I have this built-in genetic disposition of always wanting to support the underdog.

the injunction against the Galaxy is precisely that: an injunction. the underlying patent case has not yet been decided before the court. approving the injunction means that the suing party has, at first glance, met their evidentiary burden to move forward with the case. but the case itself still must be decided, and such cases can take up to a year or more to work themselves out. meanwhile, Apple can enjoy the "fruits" of reduced competition. don't kid yourself: that doesn't benefit anyone but Apple.

and with how specious software patents can be, we should ALL be wary of lawsuits whose primary effect is to stifle competitors not in the market, but out of it. doesn't matter if it's Apple, Samsung, Google, or any other party; this sort of lawsuit stinks any way you look at it.

this is not a win for Apple. this is not a win for Samsung/Google. worst of all, though, this is not a win for the consumer.

I'm not an Apple hater. All I know is that if I wanted to by a Samsung in the U.S. right now, I couldn't, thanks to Apple. And Apple did the same thing in Germany some time ago. Truly, I don't know alot about the legal background on these patent wars. But it seems to me that Apple, amongst other companies, is bringing these fights to a new level which wasn't there before, and that that isn't a good thing for me. Did TV, car, microwave, or wearing glasses manufacturers get sued and their products barred from the market on the whim of a competitor in the past? Not that I'm aware of.

I don't have any kind of smartphone yet, and in fact I was still weighing my options. I was leaning towards an Android device because I could code my own apps for it in Java, but alot of people are telling me how Apple is better, so I was still pretty much undecided. The fact that Apple is now twisting the market in its favor doesn't make me happy.

Dude, I adore Apple. I've been buying Apple products since MacOS 10.1 came out. I switched to a Google Nexus a couple of years ago after really enjoying my iPhone when Apple discontinued support for the iPhone when I was still in contract. This is just downright abusive behavior, and it continues: my iPad is also no longer supported as of iOS 6. The reason people are pissed off at Apple is that they have gotten too big for their breeches and started to abuse their customers. So the new intelligenc

You switched to an Android device because Apple stops supporting technology after _THREE_ years??? Are you joking?

Say whatever you want about Apple but they support their tech a HELL of a lot longer than Android manufacturers who often aren't utilizing the latest version of Android the day the device hits the shelves, let along a couple months later and most certainly not after _THREE YEARS_.

And before anyone points it out, I realize that's not Google's fault - it's the manufacturers - but to state you switched from an iOS device to an Android device because of "lack of support" is absolutely laughable.

I thought I made that clear - they're abusing FRAND patents. In my humble opinion, any company that abuses FRAND patents is the worst sort of offender, truly intent on stifling competition within an industry and guilty of the worst sort of anti-competitive behaviour deserving of swift and severe punishment from whatever trade organization can take action against them. If a company agrees to include their patented technology in an industry standard under FRAND terms and then renegs on those FRAND obligations, they are doing more harm to competition within an industry any any company possibly could. That, imho, makes them the true villains.

There's nothing in FRAND that says they have to give it away, only that they have to be reasonable with their licensing terms. The FRAND terms that *most* of the industry seems to have agreed on is "you don't sue us, we don't sue you". Apple is the one that doesn't like those terms, even though they were offered them.

That's not even vaguely true. Not even a little bit. The terms that most companies use is "we would rather not spend cash so how about we work out a cross-licensing deal for some of our patents". Apple, on the other hand a) has plenty of cash to pay licensing fees and b) would rather develop a competitive edge over their competition that differentiates them. Thus, they don't want to cross license - they just want to cut a check _AS IS THEIR RIGHT_. The amount being asked by Samsung and Motorola are what they consider to be unfair and unreasonable and are inherently discriminatory since they specifically target Apple.

They were still offered an option that would not have cost them anything out of pocket, and they rejected it. Samsung et. al. expecting to be paid for their work is not unreasonable, and IMO, they've gone *well* beyond what I would consider fair pricing by offering Apple an option that would have cost them nothing. Apple are the ones who rejected a fair offer.

Besides, if Samsung *really* wanted to be anti-competitive to Apple, they could simply decide that they're not going to sell LCD panels to Apple any m

False equivalence much? Apple started this whole thing by treatening to sue and suing other mobile manufacturers. Microsoft jumped in right after they saw what Apple was doing. They threatened to sue Nokia. Nokia took the threat seriously and sued first.. They threatened to sue Motorola. Motorola took the threat seriously and sued first. They threatened HTC and Samnsung. HTC and Samsung told them to go away and so Apple sued them. Look Apple started this. Everyone knows this. Blaming other comp

As CNET's Roger Cheng has explained, the idea "is based on the principle that fair licensing of intellectual property is often needed because sometimes certain ideas and patents just need to be shared for everything to work together properly"

I just wonder if things would work better if Apple Corp. might deign to share the color black with us mere mortals, who have to put up with non-black smartphones with razor sharp corners (sometimes with greater or less than 4 sides!).

Geez is there any reason not to address him that way, his legacy is becoming that of some evil villain that has triggered a doomsday device full of lawers.
It strikes me that the US is becoming less and less relevant... as the Google IO showed, it is the third world countries that is where most of the action is happening.

I dunno about the rest of you, but I'm getting a definite scorched earth feel these days. The patent Cold War is over. The Patent Hot War is now on. Sadly for the general sentiment around here, it's unlikely that anyone will do anything to fix, dismantle, or otherwise create a permanent solution to the problem of patents in general. Why not? Because these wars are going to create patent lawyer dynasties. We're talking Rockefeller money here. We're talking "Excuse me, Mr. Carnegie, but you're going to have to shift down at the table at the Old Boys Club to make room for Messrs. Dewie, Cheatum, and Howe." Laws are created by lawyers. As far as they're concerned, they've already 'fixed' the system perfectly. In every sense of the word.

Please explain to all your non-techie friends and family what Apple is doing, and why they shouldn't ever touch any Apple product until they change their way.It's very easy, I already prevented sale of a at least a few iphones.

Disclaimer: I'm not working for Google, Samsung or any other mobile related company. I'm just disgusted by Apple, and boycotting is the only way to stop them.

My closest friend bought the iPhone 4 just over 18 months ago, even after all my efforts. He kept telling me it was an iPhone and that's all that mattered.

He's too cheap to buy the apps, another mate half-jailbroke it, stopping all his banking apps working, iTunes was taking half a day to backup and often failed, the phone wouldn't factory reset, we couldn't even copy his contacts. He's pissed off with the lack of high quality free mapping. No Siri. Dull screen. The list of moans is endless.

He's just bought his daughter one. His wife is getting one in a few weeks time.

I can't understand it. They've seen my S2 connect to their TV via a common USB cable and streaming 1080p. They've seen me wirelessly send files to their laptop. They've seen Google Maps on Android. They've seen the photos it takes. And it's not even the best Android phone any more!

Android's nature counts against it where advertising and mind-share come into play, I fear. Apple has a huge marketing budget and a single device to push. Individual manufacturers of Android phones usually have multiple devices to advertise at any one time, and want to drive customers towards their own specific Android phones rather than Android as a platform. Google don't advertise Android much, but even if they did, it's a vague concept to sell to consumers, especially when there are so many customised ve

EVERYONE I know with an opinion on this topic is getting put MORE off Apple devices by it than on. I work on a floor of 40 nerds / gadget freaks, there is only 3 iphones left and 2 of those users intend to switch to Android as well.

This is like Chevy suing Toyota because people would buy more Chevy cars if Toyota wasn't selling a similar product. "They use a wheel and foot pedals to control their vehicles. We use a wheel and foot pedals. That's our thing!"

Ya know what? Fuck Apple. Fuck them right in their stupid asses. I was seriously considering making the switch back when they get an LTE iphone (paying full retail to retain my unlimited data plan and an ETF), and pick up a retina MacBook and iPad because they're freakin' gorgeous displays and it will be a year or more before anything like that hits the Android/Windows market and I'd have everything under one roof and this sentence is really long. But if this is how Apple chooses to "compete", fuck 'em. I'll wait for less litigious companies to catch up.

And that's what makes this so damn stupid. The competition is a year or more behind apple in just about everything (except data speed on phones). First to market with a consumer-friendly smartphone. First to market with a retina display smartphone. First to market with a high res tablet. First to market with a high res laptop. It's not enough for Apple to be the first up the mountain, they've got to hang their asses over the edge and shit on everyone below them.

Really? Really? Swipe-to-unlock is amazing innovation that should be used as a club to hobble the competition? Entering data for a search query is another, along with processing that request and returning the results. Those are the kinds of things we're talking about here. Not concepts or innovations that have years of R&D behind them.

At which point Samsung will have $95M but will have to re-start their advertising campaign, essentially re-launch the product, and target a market that has just bought a bunch of competing products - among which iDevices from which Apple stands to gain a lot more through e.g. app store purchases, third party products such as docks that use licensed tech, etc..

And that's assuming that by the time the decision lands the device is even relevant enough in the market to be relaunched. It may be better to launch a new product instead.Which Apple would then seek an injunction against.

$95M - I'd love to have it, but I'm guessing Samsung are not particularly impressed.

I'm really getting tired of tech news consisting almost entirely of mobile device manufacturers suing each other over patents for general concepts and design principles. Technology progresses and consumers benefit when ideas and concepts can spread. This isn't the same as, say, drug development, where millions of dollars go into R&D, and that massive investment must be recouped to protect innovation. These are just relatively obvious ideas where the real work is in the implementation, integration and promotion, not in dreaming up a UI concept.

Look under the Adoption by Apple section:"The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product "

And:

"However, Apple's designs included quite a few concepts that were not part of (or were non-trivial advances to) the prototype developed at PARC. For example[6]:The mouse was not invented at PARC, but by Douglas Engelbart in 1963, Apple's mouse was an improvement on PARC's version.Unlike the Macintosh, PARC's prototype was incapable of any direct manipulation of widgets.Unlike the Macintosh, PARC's prototype did not feature Menu bars, or pull-down menu, nor the trash.Unlike the Macintosh, PARC's windows could not overlap each other."

Oh and about the Xerox lawsuit:"The Xerox lawsuit was dismissed because the presiding judge dismissed most of Xerox's complaints as being inappropriate for a variety of legal reasons"

This basically describes what Apple does in a nutshell. Shamelessly copy other people's R&D. Polish it a bit then commercialize it and call it their invention then sue others for being inspired by the products they release in the marketplace. Apple is true scum of the earth. The enbodyment of hipocrisy.

I don't understand why you believe Apple can be placated with some design tweaks and different features. Do you work for Apple or something? You're literally the only person posting on this story taking Apples side. I work for Google and I've seen how my colleagues have consistently worked long hours to innovate and create new features. The Galaxy Nexus is an amazing phone. It's thin, and light, and doesn't even have any hardware buttons on the front at all - yet Apple still are not happy. If you can't see why you're blind.

Apples goal is not to get competitors to "design around" their patents. This has happened several times already, the Samsung Galaxy 3 has even been called out by tech review sites for having a "lawyer approved design" (it's not rectangular, it does not have slide to unlock, etc). Apple keep coming, with newer and even more stupid patents, because their goal is not individuality, it is the utter destruction of all competitors. Steve Jobs himself said that in words so clear nobody can re-interpret them.

What's more, it's very hard to make an Android phone that doesn't share design elements with the iPhone these days, because Apple has copied Android many times in the past few years, for example, its notifications tray is identical to the design that first shipped in Android 1.0, and inferior to the one shipping in Jellybean. Android 1.0 also shipped with a universal search box and pluggable API for it, it shipped with suspend/resume multi-tasking that is extremely similar to the (very unique) design Android came up with, and so on.